‘Everything shaking; there were cries and dust everywhere’

Lahore / AFP

At least 56 people were killed and more than 200 injured when an apparent suicide bomb ripped through the parking lot of a crowded park in the Pakistani city of Lahore where Christians were celebrating Easter on Sunday, officials said.
Dozens of ambulances were seen racing to the park, situated near the centre of the city of around 8 million, with many women and children among the dead and wounded.
“The toll has risen to 56. The rescue operation is continuing,” Lahore top administration official Muhammad Usman said.
The army had been called in, he said, and soldiers were at the scene helping with rescue operations and security.
Senior police official Haider Ashraf said the blast appeared to be a suicide attack, adding that ball bearings were found at the crowded park.
A medical superintendent at Jinnah Hospital, who gave his name only as Dr Ashraf, told AFP more than 40 dead bodies had arrived at the hospital.
“The number of injured stands at more than 200 people, most of them are in critical condition,” he said. I fear the death toll will rise.”
He described a nightmarish scene at the hospital, with staff treating casualties on floors and in
corridors.
Javed Ali, a 35-year-old resident who lives opposite the park, said the force of the blast had shattered his home’s windows.
“Everything was shaking, there were cries and dust everywhere.”
“After ten minutes I went outside. There was human flesh on the walls of our house. People were crying, I could hear ambulances.”
He added: “It was overcrowded because of Easter, there were a lot of Christians there. It was so crowded I told my family not to go.”
Pakistan has been battling a homegrown insurgency since 2004, with groups such as the Pakistani Taliban routinely carrying out attacks as part of their struggle to overthrow the government.
But Lahore, Pakistan’s cultural capital that lies on the country’s eastern border with India, has been relatively more peaceful in recent years.
Nationwide, overall levels of militant violence have fallen since the army began a major offensive against Taliban and Al Qaeda strongholds in the country’s northwest border areas in 2014.
Last year saw the lowest number of civilian and security forces casualties since 2007, the year the umbrella Pakistani Taliban group was formed.
But militants are still able to carry out major attacks from time to time.
At least 16 people were killed and more than two dozen wounded when a bomb blew up inside a bus in Peshawar, the main city of Pakistan’s insurgency-wracked northwest on March 16.
And Sunday’s blast in Lahore saw the highest number of casualties since a suicide bomber blew himself up, killing 55 people at the main Pakistan-India border crossing at Wagah in an attack claimed by the Jamat-ul-Ahrar faction of the
Taliban.
It also came as police in the capital Islamabad clashed with thousands of supporters of an Islamist assassin, almost a month after he was hanged for killing a provincial governor for alleged blasphemy.